photo illusionism – creative photo manipulation

Image editing for Luckham Creative goes far beyond just fixing photos or tweaking colour in to a whole world of photo illusionism, a term I use to indicate that what I create, though based in the world of photography, is not always real. Photo illusionism is where my photography, creativity and image editing skills come together to create something entirely different.

image editing

I’ve been working with Adobe Photoshop since it’s first release for the Macintosh computer in 1990, even before that I used a program called Digital Darkroom for simple image editing. Initially, these programs were used to “clean up” and retouch/restore images, but over the years I went from simple colour corrections and deletions, to more complex editing such as image compositing, photo merges, replacing parts of an image with something else, or creatively manipulating multiple images into a whole new, surreal scene. From the practical to the impossible and the whimsical, you’ll see examples of my image editing in the galleries linked below. In addition to providing this service to Luckham Creative’s web and print design clients I also do commissioned work. I can shoot the photography and then edit, or edit your photos. One client supplied photos of her son and his girlfriend in superhero costumes… and I then made everyone believe they could fly! And as you’ll see in some of my photo illusions, cloning is not as impossible as you might think, my only limit is imagination, of which I bring a lot to every project. So if you want to do something special with those photos you have from ComicCon, well, you should call and let’s make the impossible, possible.

photo illusionism

Illusionism was the artistic attempt to paint something very precisely but in a deceptive fashion, Trompe-l’œil, French for ‘deceive the eye’. An ancient Greek story tells of a contest between two renowned painters. Zeuxis (born around 464 BC) produced a still life painting so convincing, that birds flew down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes. He then asked his rival, Parrhasius, to pull back a pair of very tattered curtains in order to judge the painting behind them. Parrhasius won the contest, as his painting was of the curtains themselves. Now I’m doing the same thing but deceiving your eye through my creative photo manipulations or photo illusionism. A similar example is the cover illusion on my book ‘What if Weekends’ in the sidebar. What looks like a photo of me sitting in a gallery surrounded by my illusions and guests from the actual illusions is in reality just me sitting in a gallery of old paintings all by myself. Have you thought of a great photo illusion of your own yet? Call today to book a commisioned photo illusion of your own or to discuss how to enhance your visual communications.

what if weekends

To showcase my skill in creating photo illusions I started a 52 Weeks Photo Project called “What if Weekends” in April of 2012. “What if Weekends” was a project where I created one photo illusion every week for 52 weeks and posted them on Facebook, Flickr and this web site. On October 24th and 25th Luckham Creative hosted What if Weekends: the Exhibit and Book Launch where What if Weekends: the book was officially launched. The photo illusion you see on the right called “What if… you were misunderstood” of a giant green woman who looks as though she is attacking Parliament Hill, but is in fact saving tourists from a runaway tour bus, is actually several real photographs that have been edited and merged together to create the illusion you see!

To see individual samples of  photography, image editing or photo illusionism work check the category posts in the sidebar or click here to see posts in all photography categories.

For more information on what I do read “What does Luckham Creative do?”.

Take a moment to read some testimonials from past and present clients.